Daniel Lesson 44

Angelology – Daniel 10:13-11:1

Turn to Daniel 10, continuing our study of the angelic conflict that underlies history. In Daniel 10, 11 and 12 Daniel has a direct encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ; God the Son in His preincarnate form is present in these chapters. Daniel has been progressing over seventy years of his life to an ever deepening relationship with Christ until toward the end, just before death, he actually sees Jesus Christ in His preincarnate form face to face. God the Son is pictured in this vision as the king-priest; he wears white linen which is the uniform of the priest. He is the one who is the ruler and therefore the king. So God the Son is the king-priest over all of history, and He is going to reveal to Daniel all the specific facts that relate to Israel during the period of the times of the Gentiles. Jesus Christ as king rules all history; Jesus Christ as priest causes history to bring men to God, and therefore Jesus Christ acts as, so to speak, the leader of history in which man, as a race, will be brought back to their created position and destiny of subduing all nature, including angels under man’s feet.

It’s no accident that when Jesus Christ goes to reveal the details of history that He is going to reveal to all these people the angelic conflict. Why bring angels up at this point? The answer is that Jesus Christ is revealing Himself as the Lord of history, as the Son of man, therefore part and parcel of the human race, the human race has been ordained to subdue the earth and that includes subduing all angels.

We find from Jesus Christ’s information in Daniel 10 the divine viewpoint view of history so that we no longer will be prone to put something before this. Jesus Christ as the author of history takes precedence, every fact of history to be seen in its proper perspective must be seen the way Jesus sees it. And any history course that does not begin with Jesus Christ and the Word of God is apostate; to the degree that Jesus Christ is ignored, to the degree that the divine decrees of God are not mentioned, that is God’s sovereign rule, to that degree the course is a failure because historians must, like everyone else, if they are truly acting as redeemed creatures, subordinate their field to the authority of the Word of God. Daniel is a book of wisdom and it closes with a section dealing with the whole root, the whole starting point, the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word.

Daniel 10:13, we have here part of the revelation that Christ gives through the audio visual angel as I have called him, Jesus Himself stops in verse 9 and from verse 10 on it’s the work of the audio visual angel. This angel reports to Daniel, “But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.” Now Daniel, for twenty-one days has been involved in praying. He has sought understanding concerning the problem of restoration. Why in 538 BC, thereabouts, why when the Jews went back to the land were they having such difficulty restoring the temple and restoring their culture; they shouldn’t according to Daniel, because God had provided for this sovereign return of the Jew back to Palestine. But even though God had sovereignly chosen to restore the Jew, the Jew found when he got back in the land tremendous political resistance; resistance that was calculated not just to delay the Jew from restoring his culture but resistance that was calculated to destroy the Jew. And the shock among the Jews was why, when we are going back to the land, apparently under divine permission, and we still in physical jeopardy; why is this?

And Daniel, for twenty-one days prays and for twenty-one days does not receive an answer until finally the angel comes and explains the fact that he was delayed for twenty-one days. It only takes six minutes, according to the previous chapters, for an angel to go from the throne room of God to where Daniel is in the Medo-Persian Empire. Whatever that distance, X is, it takes approximately six minutes or so, it takes some time but not a long time. And obviously six minutes is a lot less than twenty-one days and so the question is why is it that this angel took twenty-one days to do the same thing Gabriel took only six minutes to do. So he’s explaining to him why and God has this all worked out so that the very mode of the prayer answer is an answer to the prayer. That is, the answer to this prayer comes with suffering.

So therefore we want to understand what he’s talking about, Michael, one of the chief princes…a chief prince is not a human agent, the word “chief prince” in verse 13 refers to the chief or “arch,” “the archangel.” Now this should really shock a lot of people who have been brought up to think of history as just a naturalistic thing. What verse 13 is saying is that the archangel had resistance, had to crash through a barrier of resistance that was angelic in nature that assembled around the old Medo-Persian Empire, that the geo-political boundaries of the Medo-Persian Empire extended out into space and as they extended out into space they enveloped certain angelic areas and therefore this angel could not come into the air space, so to speak, around Medo-Persia without penetrating this demonic shield.

We’re going to have some fantastic insights in this chapter on how the angels manipulate history or how they are working in history. And to do so we must appreciate the fact that in back of it all lies an angelic conflict. The last time we dealt with some of the angelic conflict and the origin of evil; I’ll now summarize the angelic conflict in five propositions. This is not a complete treatment but it’s an overview so we can get going with the passage and have some appreciation for what’s happening here. The angelic conflict under five points:

The first point is that angels were created in Genesis 1 along with physical creation and they are considered in the Bible as being part of nature. Angels were created with nature in Genesis 1 and are considered to be part of nature throughout the Bible. Verses/references: Job 38:4-7, Psalm 104:4; Psalm 148:2. These passages show that angels are considered to be part of nature. [Job 38:4-7, “Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, [2] Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? [3] Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. [4] Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding.” Psalm 104:4, “Who maketh His angels spirits, His ministers a flaming fire.” Psalm 148:2, “Praise ye him, all His angels; praise ye him, all His hosts.”]

Second point; since man was to subdue nature, therefore man was also destined to subdue angels. Genesis 1:28-30; Psalm 8:5-8; 1 Corinthians 6:2-3. Since man was to subdue nature, he was also to subdue the angels who were part of nature. [Gen. 1:28-30 “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply and fill the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. [29] And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food. [30] And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for food: and it was so.” Psalm 8:5-8; [4] What is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him? [5] For Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. [6] Thou made him to have dominion over all the works of Thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet. [7] All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, [8] The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passes through the paths of the seas.” 1 Corinthians 6:2-3, “Do you not know that the saints shall judge the world? And if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? [3] Know ye not that we shall judge angels? How much more things that pertain to this life?”]

Third proposition: Satan sought to be his own king over creation in Isaiah 14:12-17 and Ezekiel 28:11-19.

The fourth point, Satan therefore tempted man to keep him from being ruler over nature; Satan tempted man to keep him from becoming the ruler over all nature. Genesis 3:1-5.

The fifth point, God’s response to this whole thing was the plan of salvation directed toward man, under the Second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, who would successfully subdue all nature. Jesus Christ was to subdue all nature, including Satan and his angels, so Jesus Christ becomes the head of the human race, the new human race and through Jesus Christ the mandate of Genesis 1 is now carried out and it’s carried out against Satan and against the resistance and rebellious kingdom he has. Genesis 3:15-19, and just to show you that Genesis is interpreted literally in the rest of Scripture, Romans 5:12-21 (Romans 5:12-21 teaches the same thing), 1 Corinthians 15:10-28 teaches about Christ subduing nature; Ephesians 1:10 teaches that Christ will subdue all things unto Himself; Colossians 2:15 teaches that Jesus Christ at the cross obtained victory, the first element, over Satan’s angels, and finally, in the last view of history, Revelation 5:9-10. These verses if you study them go along and develop the angelic conflict.

Now the application of the angelic conflict to this passage: we understand there is this background of war. All human conflict and war is but a physical reflection of something unseen in the background, violence and war and strife in the invisible realm. So now we apply this doctrine, the doctrine of the angelic conflict, and we consider Satan’s strategy. Satan’s overall strategy remains the same from dispensation to dispensation, and that is to prevent man from reaching his God-given destiny. Satan desperately wants to short-circuit man from ever attaining his position in the universe as ruler, under God of course. So Satan’s long-term strategy is to delay, to frustrate, to cause men to misunderstand the plan of God, to do everything he can to confuse you to keep you from his destiny. That’s his long-term strategy; it’s been his strategy from the point of the fall of Genesis 3 on down to the lake of fire of Revelation 20.

But, although Satan’s strategy is the same, his tactics vary from dispensation to dispensation. In the dispensation of Israel, which lasted from the Exodus to Pentecost, Satan’s tactic was to physically destroy Israel so Messiah could not be born. He knew that Messiah had to be physically born of a Jew, and Satan didn’t know which Jew, he knew some of the lineage but that’s all. He could never know which Jewish family would ultimately be the right family God would use to bring His Messiah into existence. And therefore Satan tried tactics of destruction against Israel; and therefore anti-Semitism in ancient history was always to destroy the Jew.

Now anti-Semitism and the destruction of the Jew figure in this passage of Daniel, this is what it’s all about. Now we go to verse 13, having had this introduction to the angelic conflict and its application. We come to verse 13, we will finish chapter 10 this morning and in fact go into verse 1 of chapter 11.

Daniel 10:13, “But the prince of the kingdom of Persia,” the angel reports, “withstood me twenty-one days.” “The prince of the kingdom of Persia,” … the kingdom of Persia is the Medo-Persian Empire. So the Medo-Persian Empire, though it looks on a world map as though it is made up of just a political entity of thousands of people dwelling in the Mesopotamian Valley, actually had over it a demon. There was one chief demon who was over the entire Medo-Persian Empire. That is the person who is said to “the prince of the kingdom of Persia.” The Medo-Persian Empire had over itself a demon.

Satan is given a jurisdiction on this earth; we pick this up from passages like Deuteronomy 4:19 and passages like Matthew 4. In Deuteronomy 4:19 all the Gentiles are essentially given over in their geopolitical influence spheres to demonic powers, and in Matthew 4 Jesus Christ is offered by Satan the political rule of the world back. Now Satan can’t offer Jesus something that isn’t Satan’s and when Jesus is offered by Satan, “just bow down to me Jesus and I’ll give you the kingdoms of the world,” Jesus did not reply “oh but Satan, they’re not yours.” In other words, Jesus by going along with the temptation admits that Satan has vast influence in world politics. This is part of the Biblical view of history and it has certain tremendous implications for what you can do as a Christian citizen to promote peace. There are some things you do and there are some things you don’t do because of this particular view of history.

So we have the Persian kingdom, apparently some control over it, some demonic control. Actually if we were to scope this out on an organization chart we would have demon X, he’s not named, and under him he has lesser demons, and under them they have lesser demons and so on, and down here you have the Medo-Persian Empire with thousands and thousand of people, and you have a demonic hierarchy or organization that is at work, trying to take over this kingdom. So when this audio visual angel… here’s Daniel down here in the Medo-Persian Empire, this angel had to come in like this and when he came into this area he was resisted. And for three weeks he fought his way into the system. This shows you the thickness of the darkness of world politics. It is not just a case of a leader of this country, a political party in that country, a negotiator at this conference or this treaty. It is not that simple. The Bible insists there are complexities here that defy and boggle the human mind. So the angel admits that there is this demon over the king of Persia and he dispatches, this demon, dispatches some sort of an intercept force to stop this angel; he’s defending. There’s a little defense and a skirmish that occurred at the boundary.

Now we don’t know anything about how this happened, all we’ve got is the report. I didn’t write it so don’t accuse me of making all this up, it’s there in the text and it’s been there for many centuries. And Jesus Himself confirms the validity of this text, so we’re stuck with it. We’re free to believe it or reject it but we’re not free to ignore it. We are free, though, to ask a question: why do you suppose that the demon that operated over the Medo-Persian Empire was so concerned about this angel getting through to Daniel. We’ve got to ask that question. He wasn’t concerned about Gabriel earlier, why concerned about this particular angel getting through with this particular message. There must be something threatening to Satan that is contained in Daniel 10, 11 and 12. There must be a message here that Satan does not want us to see; maybe one of his secrets are revealed, maybe he is unmasked, maybe there is some workings of Satan in history that Satan would prefer us not to know about because if we are ignorant then he can manipulate us much more effectively but if we know this maybe we’ll have much more of a mental attitude of freedom.

This message that comes is going to, through Daniel, be distributed to the believers of his day. So down here you have many believers; these believers are going to receive doctrine from Daniel. So the angel passes the message to Daniel, Daniel writes it up and distributes it to believers. What happens? Those believers see that doctrine and they begin to believe, they begin to respond to the Word of God, and they have long-range faith, which is hope, and that is what Satan doesn’t want believers to have. He doesn’t want them to have hope; Satan wants the Jewish believers to give up; he wants to discourage, he wants to frustrate because his tactic is if you can defeat someone in their mind, you can defeat them in their body. Defeat a person’s mental attitude and you will always defeat the person. And Satan’s whole objective is to undermine the aggressive mental attitude, the mental attitude of victory, the mental attitude of freedom.

Satan wants that mental attitude destroyed because when that mental attitude is destroyed then people cannot defend their freedom. A population that is out of it in their mental attitude will never take up arms to defend themselves. You will never have victory in war without victory in the mental attitude first. And the Jews are back in the land and Nehemiah 4:14 is going to give the doctrine of the just war, and these people are going to have to mobilize with arms to defend their freedom, but they can’t mobilize, remember Satan’s tactics, what are his tactics in the dispensation of Israel? The tactics are physically destroy the Jew. How do you physically destroy the Jew? By militarily defeating him. How do you militarily defeat him? Destroying his mental attitude and then he won’t have the guts or the courage to fight.

So, by doing this, destroying hope, he hopes therefore (Satan does) to destroy the Jew. So it’s a battle for the mental attitude of the believers, the Jewish believers of this day. That’s what it’s all about, and that’s why this angel is… it take three weeks to bring this message. The angel is determined he’s going to give believers this message; believers need this message, believers who have no hope will always fold up before an aggressive enemy. Moshe Dian was pointing out that America has to make a choice; we always know what we don’t want, but what do we want. Like he pointed out, Russia is not unaggressive; she doesn’t mind getting involved in wars here and there. We do, she doesn’t, and we have to have a mental attitude of aggressiveness, that’s the only way you keep peace in the world, by strength and aggressiveness. This is a language that bullies understand; bullies don’t understand any other language except power. And in this world the only language that will communicate to bully-boys and dictators is force. It’s the same thing back here, these Jews have got to be given the mental attitude to use military force when necessary.

So the angel goes on to describe that “Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me.” Now we don’t exactly know how Michael helps him; we have a hint later in the passage, and this gets back to what you can do as a believer to promote victory in the angelic conflict. But we’re not given that information yet by verse 13. Only in verse 13 do we understand that Michael comes to his aid. So here we have the situation, this audio visual angel from the throne room of God comes into the Medo-Persian Empire and he meets resistance, and there comes an angel to help him called Michael. Now Michael is the archangel of the nation Israel. He is always associated with Israel in history. Therefore, whatever Michael is doing to help this angel it’s got to be something that he’s doing through the physical nation Israel in history. So we’re going to see there’s all sorts of dimensions, there’s the unseen battle and the seen battle and this rocks back and forth; it’s very interesting. So Michael is helping him, we’ll find out how in a moment but Michael in some way through the nation Israel helps this person crash through to Daniel. Then it says “I remained there with the kings of Persia,” and literally I was delayed there, there was a great battle and even Michael had problems.

Daniel 10:14, “Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days: for yet the vision is for many days.” “I am come to make you understand,” so the angel is not come to give Daniel an ecstatic experience; he is not going to be slain in the spirit and he’s not going to speak in tongues. He is going to have a contentful lesson. In other words, this is a teaching situation. “I have come to make you understand what shall befall thy people,” that is Israel, “in the latter days” for yet the vision is for many days.” Literally it means there remains a vision of the latter days. In other words, the angel is arguing in verse 14, Daniel you don’t yet have all the information you need to function effectively as a believer. So there yet remains a vision of the latter days. In other words, prophecy hasn’t finished yet.

Daniel 10:15, Daniel reports his response, “And when he had spoken such words unto me, I set my face toward the ground, and I became dumb.” There is a shock to Daniel’s body, this is the second time we see it. In Daniel 10:9 Daniel caved in physically when he saw God the Son in his preincarnate form. And now in verse 15 he caves in again. Lest we be too hard on Daniel, let’s remember Daniel is almost 90 years of age here; he is an old, old man, his body isn’t up to this kind of thing and if you look carefully at the symptoms he finds himself unable to hold his body erect, the word “dumb” means he can’t speak, later on he talks about he can’t breathe. If you connect all those physical symptoms they all talk about one thing; whatever this spiritual something is that’s going on in this vision, Daniel is having trouble with his central nervous system; it’s affecting that part of his body. And I’ve long been a contender personally that the human spirit is linked to our physical body at the point of the nervous system. And I think these passages confirm it, that whenever there’s a disturbance the symptoms that are given off are all symptoms that can be explained as interference with the central nervous system of the body.

Daniel 10:16, “And, behold, one like the similitude of the sons of men touched my lips,” so we’re introduced to the third angel now, we’ve got three angels, at least. We’ve got the angel of Jehovah, who is Jesus Christ preincarnate; we have the audio visual angel who is giving the vision, and for lack of any other theological title we’ll call this one the first aid angel. This is the angel that… his job is to keep Daniel’s weakened physical body in shape for teaching, physical preparation for teaching, he can’t learn anything while his face is in the ground. “And, behold, one like the similitude of the sons of men,” so obviously this person just looks like a man, Daniel says. If you say how did he look, what did he look like? He just looked like anybody else; he looked like a people, that’s what he’s saying. He doesn’t go into any details, but he says he reached out and he touched my lips and “then I opened my mouth, and spoke,” and so whatever it was that was impairing the ability of his mouth to make words was solved by this touch of the angel.

And you’ll notice something here, just a side point, and that is that you will find over and over and over in Scripture angels do not minister to you spiritually. Angels minister to you physically; it is the Holy Spirit that administers to people spiritually. When you find angels, what do you find them doing? Do you ever find angels ministering to believers spiritually? No, you find angels providing Elijah with food, raven situation there, you find angels providing Jesus Christ with food, you see angels getting Peter out of physical jail, you always find angels providing physically but never spiritually. And so here, these angels aren’t helping Daniel’s human spirit, they’re just helping his body.

“…I opened my mouth, and spoke, and said unto him that stood before me,” that’s the audio visual angel, “O my lord,” or sir, he respects his command and his authority and his position; he says, “by the vision my sorrows are turned upon me, and I have retained no strength. [17] For how can the servant of this, my lord, talk with this, my lord? For as for me, straightway there remained no strength in me, neither is there breath left in me.” See, he’s lost respiration control, for some reason it’s all screwed up, he’s having trouble breathing. So he’s telling him, hey, I need some first-aid.

So the angel again, in Daniel 10:18, “Then there came again and touched me one like the appearance of a man, and he strengthened me,” so these angels are having a time keeping Daniel going physically. But by the time you get to verse 18 I hope you begin to notice something about this passage and we’ll see it later on because there’s a mysterious verse that’s very hard to interpret unless you see this first; this vision is given in haste. It sounds like God would never be hasty but this is one of those remarkable things where it really appeared that these angels were trying to hurry up, get this thing closed, as though they’re looking for enemy interference. They are in enemy territory, so the audio visual angel is trying to hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, let’s get this message across. And then he faints, and they say get the first-aid guy here, get him up, and then he starts talking again and he faints, and then they had to give him first-aid again. There’s a rush to the text; you want to catch the rush because later on there’s a verse that’s going to be said that you won’t understand unless you understand this thing is rushed here. These angels are in a hurry.

Daniel 10:19, “And said,” so he starts again, “O man greatly beloved,” he resumes where he started in verse 11, remember he started talking, “O Daniel, you’re a man greatly beloved,” and he went on to start teaching and then he caved in and he had all this problem with first-aid and so on, now he starts all over again, “O man of treasuries,” same title giving us God’s viewpoint of Daniel and his fantastic soul. Daniel was a mature believer who had doctrine in his soul, he had the divine viewpoint framework in his mentality and that was a treasury according to God. So when God looks down he says Daniel, you are a man who has treasuries in your soul. He doesn’t look down and say oh Daniel, you’re a might man of IQ, oh Daniel, you’re a might man who has a PhD; or Daniel, you’re the mighty man who has looks, riches, wealth. No, God’s evaluation of this man is based solely on his character and how he has responded to the Word of God.

“O man of treasuries, fear not: peace be unto thee, be strong, yea, be strong.” Now that is too slow the way it’s translated, the Hebrew doesn’t go like that. There’s an urgency to this thing. Again you’ve seen the angels fumbling over one another trying to prop him up and get him to listen, and now the angel says, “O man, don’t fear, peace be unto you,” and the word “peace be unto you” is the same word today used in Israel for hello. Shalom [can’t understand word]. It’s just an expression, Daniel, come on, wake up. And then the word “be strong, yea, be strong” is the imperative, and it’s a short form of the verb and it’s very… “Be strong! Be strong! Come on! Come on!” that’s the way it ought to be translated, with exclamation points. There’s a rapidity, there’s a speed in this whole thing. This angel is in a hurry.

Now so far you see this, you see the struggle, the angel took twenty-one days to get there and then when he gets there everything is in a rush. Why? Back in Daniel 10:1 remember what we said the heading for this whole chapter? “IN the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia, a thing was revealed unto Daniel, whose name was called Belteshazzar; and the thing was true,” and remember I said it should be translated “and a great struggle,” … a great struggle, verse 1. So that’s why this passage has the heading, the whole think speaks of war, violence, haste, rapidity, things are rushed here, there’s tremendous conflict going on. So the angel calls to him, “be strong! Be strong! And when he had spoken unto me I was strengthened, and said; Let my lord speak; for thou hast strengthened me.”

Now Daniel 10:20, “Then said he, Knowest thou wherefore I come unto thee?” See, by this time the teacher is asking a question; now I’ve taught part of the lesson to you, do you understand me, so we can get on with this thing. I’ve only got a short time, do you understand so far why I’ve dome to thee. So again the speed here, “And now will I return” he says, “to fight with the prince of Persia: and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Greece shall come.” Now this has fantastic implications in history. It can read, the Hebrew is vague here; it can be “I will” or “I must return.”

“I must return,” that’s one statement, I’ve got to get out of here, and this explains the urgency. This angel who was fighting has left the battlefield to come to report to Daniel something and he has to hurry up and get the message to Daniel so he can get back to the battlefield, that’s the point. He cannot relax his vigil on the battlefield. So there’s something that’s going to happen here if he doesn’t get back to the battlefield; “I must return to fight with the prince of Persia;” this is why he’s in a hurry.

“And when I am gone forth” the King James says, but in the Hebrew it’s participles, “I am leaving to fight with the Persia, and the king of Greece is coming,” now what’s that mean? That means that as Daniel sits in the flow of history there are four great ages. There is the Neo-Babylonian period, the Medo-Persian period, the Grecian period and the Roman period. Daniel has lived his whole live under the Neo-Babylonian period, he is now living in the time of the Medo-Persian Empire, and this angel is telling him I am fighting with the Medo-Persian Empire and as I am leaving, in other words, I’m going to fight with the prince of the kingdom of Persia and when I finish fighting, the kingdom of Greece is coming.

So he’s looking down through the corridors of time to kingdom number three and the fact that it is coming on the scene, and as Greece expands the prince of Grecia is not Alexander, he is going to be specified later in the text, in Daniel 11, but the “prince of Grecia” in verse 20 is not Alexander the Great, but he is another demon that headed the entire hellenization of the ancient world. All of Greece and its expansion under King Alexander was actually superintended in the unseen realm by kind of like an archangel demon. And he controlled that part of Greece, so Greece was under this demonic leadership. So he’s warning Daniel about the change from the second kingdom to the third kingdom.

We want to understand the flow of history a little bit here and take a look at what we’re talking about in the way of kingdoms. This is the Caspian Sea, this is the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf; that shows you the outline of the Medo-Persian Empire and I do this because few people understand how big this empire was; it was a tremendous empire that stretched all the way to the Aegean Sea in the west; all the way from Libya in North Africa; it was a tremendously large kingdom; it encompassed all of the Nile, this is a vast, vast kingdom and it extended as far east as India. Now this is important for one reason in particular, for many reasons but one in particular as a Christian you always want to remember, the Medo-Persian Empire is the reason why you have a link between the Greeks and the Orient. They were both interconnected by means of the Medo-Persian Empire. So when you have religious changes going on in Hinduism with Buddha and Confucius over here, don’t just think those are isolated; they are part and parcel of a change that went throughout the ancient world because as Buddha and Confucius were operating in the Orient, so was Aristotle and the pre-Socratics operating up here in the Aegean sector.

After this kingdom you then have the Seleucids, after Alexander’s kingdom was divided, this is going to be the king of the north and the king of the south which we will study in Daniel 11; here’s the eastern end of the Mediterranean, this is the Seleucid kingdom, Israel is here in the south you have the Ptolemy’s; the Ptolemaic kingdom is the king of the south; the Seleucid kingdom is the king of the north. The king of the north is not Russia in Daniel 11. So much for maps and charts, those are the historic kingdoms that you see in history and history books, and now we’re going to study a few things, what went on that history books don’t tell you.

Daniel 10:21, “But I will show thee that which is noted in the scripture of truth,” now you see, he’s explaining the lesson but he’s also explaining why he’s teaching Daniel so fast. He starts out in verse 20 with a question, do you know, have you got it so far? Okay, now I’ve got to return to fight and as I’m leaving and this era closes, there’s going to be another kingdom coming. Then it hops back to the lesson in verse 21, “I will show thee that which has been written in the book of ’emeth, now what is ’emeth? It is the word from which we get “amen” and it means steadfastness, it means reliability; theologically it is the immutable council of God presented as a book, the immutable council of God. “I will tell you” he says, “what God’s blueprint is in history,” God’s blueprint for history. So we have God, who is sovereign, righteous, just, etc. who has the blueprint for the creature. This blueprint is called cepher ’emeth, “the book of truth,” it is “the book of life” in the New Testament. It is always pictured in Scripture as a book; the pages are in it, and the pages give every historic event.

Now do you know what the object is of an historian, a Christian historian whose basic job is working with history? Do you know what his job ultimately is? To reconstruct the book of truth. As the historian observes the flow of history up to his present moment, God has a blueprint for history and the object of the historian is to understand that blueprint of history. That’s the object of his research. He may not state it that way but that, from the Biblical point of view, is what the object of the historian is; to reconstruct down here what is up there. And he can’t do it without aid of the Word of God and that’s why I say you can’t study history unless you start with the Word of God. If history is a result of God’s plan, then it’s obvious that you’d better go to the planner to get started in your work. And historians who refuse to start with the Word of God can never hope to attain this objective because they cut themselves off at the very start by presupposing that history flows from chance.

Here, then, is “the scripture of truth.” Now if we stopped the passage right there we would be in danger of fatalism, and I want you to notice how very, very, very careful, how very, very balanced the Holy Spirit is when He writes the Bible. The Holy Spirit knows what we’re going to do and how we’re going to screw up when we study this stuff. He knows our weaknesses, He knows all of us have tendency to go off in one extreme or the other and one of the signs of the inspiration of the Bible is that the Holy Spirit, when He writes a portion, always writes it interlocking it with balance.

Daniel 10:21 is a classic example of this. The first part of verse 21 is so heavy on sovereignty you would swear that this leads to fatalism, why, if it’s written in the books for whatever is written in the books shall surely come to pass, regardless of means. Surely this argues for fatalism; what is must come to pass, what is written in those books. And if you stopped there, yes, that would be a conclusion but the angel doesn’t stop there, he continues in verse 21 and in Daniel 11:1, “and there is none that holdeth with me in these things, but Michael, your prince. [11:1] “Also I, in the first year of Darius, the Mede, even I, stood to confirm and to strengthen him,” that is Michael.

Daniel 10:21 again, “There is none that fights with me,” in other words, he is saying look Daniel, here’s God’s will, God’s sovereign decreed will, but says the angel, though that is God’s sovereign decreed will, to get to that point involves a fantastic struggle and only Michael and myself currently are operating in history to carry that decree out. The blueprint is not the plan itself and this is where dime-store Calvinism gets in trouble every time. Just because I have a blueprint doesn’t mean I have the house. If you could buy a house for the price of a blueprint you’d have it made. And this is what the text is arguing, yes, it’s all written in God’s book, of course it is, and history is surely going to go that way, says the angel, I have no doubt in my mind that history is going to go that way, but it’s going to be caused, Michael and myself, we struggle and we struggle, and we struggle and struggle and struggle, and then he gives two illustrations.

He says in verse 21, the first illustration is right now, fighting with the kingdom of Medo-Persia, I have no ally in all the angelic realm, we don’t know why, but there’s no help for this angel apart from Michael; that’s the first example. So the absolute sovereign decree of God comes by means of a fierce struggle and the first illustration is during the Medo-Persian Empire. There’s a tremendous background struggle going on he says, and I only have one helper, Michael. Then he gives in Daniel 11:1 a second illustration from past history. He says back in the year 539 BC when this whole thing started, the Medo-Persian Empire started, “the first year of Darius, the Mede, I stood to confirm and to strengthen Michael.” Back then there was another struggle. So this was under the reign of Darius the Mede. And in his reign there was a similar struggle.

Now if this is all we had this would be an interesting lesson. Except some of us are very inquisitive and if we read verse 1 carefully, certainly someone is going to ask the question, wait a minute, the first year of Darius, the Mede, there was a great struggle in Persia; do you suppose we could go to another portion of the Word of God and we could discover what that struggle looked like from the secular point of view, then we could take this information of Daniel 11:1, put it together and have the whole picture? Of course, Daniel 6 tells us what the incident was.

Turn back to Daniel 6. Darius, the Mede, had just assumed control of the Medo-Persia Empire; he was sixty-two years old at the time and he was a person that had very little stability as a leader. He was a man who was beneficent but he had very little personal stability. So in Daniel 6:1 we read, “It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom and hundred and twenty princes, who should rule over the whole kingdom. [2] And over these, three presidents, of whom Daniel was the first,” so Daniel has a high position inside the Medo-Persian Empire. So as the Medo-Persian replaces, remember the Neo-Babylonian Empire went down that famous night with Belshazzar’s orgy in the palace and the armies, the Medo-Persian armies moved up the river and went in and took the city over. Now we have the Medo-Persian Empire and the first ruler mentioned is Darius. Darius sets up the kingdom and in his hierarchy, in his structure he has Jews. And in particular he has one Jew very high up, Daniel. Now we want to look at history without the view that we got in Daniel 10. Forget what we’ve just talked about, angelic conflict, just wipe that all away and go back to the way we normally look at history and we’re going to see an incident happen.

So Daniel distinguished himself in verse 3, he excelled above the presidents and they became jealous. It’s the old story; people cannot stand truly productive people. Christians will always be, when they are productive Christians, will always be maligned and criticized because in this country we have a false concept of equality. Labor unions are fond of this, that you must not over-produce because you might embarrass the next worker, and let’s have the lowest common denominator. Schools have this, the lowest person is a moron so therefore let the lowest common denominator, moron, and we’ll design everything for the morons. Always pull everything down to the lowest common denominator because we want to make everything equal. We, as Americans, that’s one of our weaknesses, we are gung ho equality to the point of lowest common denominator equality. And here it’s the same concept.

Daniel excelled, he was just an upper class person and low class people can’t stand high class people. Daniel 6:4, “Then the presidents and prices sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom;” so there’s a plot of political intrigue, mental attitude sins, jealousy, vindictiveness, that starts to operate within this hierarchy. So let’s put people inside Darius’ organization now, you’re looking at the bureaucracy of one of the most powerful kingdoms of the world and one of the best administered kingdoms of the world. And these people are on negative volition inside the political hierarchy of this kingdom. All these people hate their creature responsibilities. All of them have rejected Jesus Christ as Savior and all of them, therefore, have turned from the Word of God and into darkness. As such now they entertain these tremendous mental attitude sins and they begin to pick out Daniel to persecute.

Daniel 6 leads to the famous Daniel in the lion’s den incident, in which you have the power of the state brought against Daniel to destroy him. And in particular when you look at the decree, verse 8, these people with their vindictiveness and their mental attitude sins, they come to the king and say [Daniel 6:8] “O king, establish the decree,” and what does the decree say? The last part of verse 7, that no man can ask a petition of God for thirty days. What does that prohibit? All prayer. Of what people in particular? The Jew!

So, back in the very first year what did you have? You had an anti-Semitic movement in the Medo-Persian Empire. There was a struggle that went on, and from the horizontal view of Daniel 6 you know what happened, the lion’s den, God stopped the lion’s mouths and so forth. And Daniel 6:22, “My God hath sent his angel, and has shut the lions’ mouth,” and [23] “the king was exceedingly glad,” and then the king gave out a decree in verse 26.

What was the decree in Daniel 6:26? “I make a decree, that in every dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel; for he is the living God,” that was the resolution, and that’s all we ever saw of what happened in Daniel 6, until now we get the inside picture of what happened. Turn to Daniel 11:1, “in the first year of Darius, the Mede, I stood up to confirm Michael [to confirm and strengthen him.]” Now does that make sense now what happened? Who was Michael? He is the patron angel of the Jews. Why did Michael need strengthening? Because the Jews were in danger of being wiped out by the anti-Semitic policies of the Medo-Persian Empire in the first year of Darius. You had an entire empire titter and totter whether it was going to be anti-Semitic or pro-Semitic and there were high up peoples in the government that plotted and plotted, we must turn the Medo-Persian Empire to a policy of anti-Semitism. And therefore Michael, who is the patron angel, you have this angel backing Israel, and Michael is in trouble, and so who comes to Michael’s aid? This angel; he says “I stood and I strengthened Michael.”

Now translated what did that mean? It means I helped pull levers unseen in history to cause the Medo-Persian Empire to develop a pro-Semitic policy. So you have an entire policy shift by one of the greatest nations on earth, you saw the map, all the way from Greece to India, shift in one year its governmental policies. And the Bible’s explanation is it wasn’t just due to people; it was due to angelic forces operating in and behind the scenes, struggling to force this issue.

Now there’s a hint to apply all this. You say well how can we apply this. Mechanics are revealed here that now I hope will illuminate some verses of the New Testament that before might have looked just like kind of innocent verses. But there is a mechanics of operation into history and how Christians affect history. Remember, human was involved; here’s Daniel; Daniel and by identification all Jews inside the Medo-Persian Empire were becoming a victim of anti-Semitic policy. Backing those people was Michael. Over here you have thousands and thousands and thousands of people in the Medo-Persian Empire and one in particular, Darius, and backing them you have the demonic angel, that demon, the head of the kingdom of Persia. And a demon power is fighting Michael. From the secular historian point of view, forgetting all the angels, what did it look like? If you were there and you were a newspaper writer how would you have reported the event? Wouldn’t you have just said well it was just [can’t understand word] people just had mental attitude sins, these ideas just came. And the Bible says the ideas just came? People just had mental attitude sins? Who whipped all this up? Who whipped up the mobs into their frenzy? Was that just human dynamics of group interaction or was it a lot bigger dynamics than you think? Angelic interaction was responsible for whipping up the anti-Semitic mobs of the Medo-Persian Empire.

If that’s the case, something else holds. Back in verse 13 we had a mystery in this Daniel 10, it said that Michael came to help me when I was in trouble. Now do you suppose we can reverse these mechanics and suggest what was going on in 13? How did Michael help this person? Let’s look at it again; twenty-one days went by, three weeks. During these three weeks you have the audio visual angel in trouble. During those three weeks Michael helped him like he helped Michael before. How did Michael help him? Michael is identified with Jews. What particular Jew is doing what particular thing for those three weeks? Praying, Daniel is praying. And Michael is helping. Now we can’t be dogmatic but the Scripture strongly suggests that the intercessory prayers of believers activate angelic powers in the unseen realms of history and this is why, if you will not turn to the New Testament we have that strange passage in 1 Timothy 2.

1 Timothy 2:1, “I exhort, therefore, that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men, [2] For kings, and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.” Now how is the Christian in Satan’s world ever going to live a life that is quiet and peaceable? How is the ever going to happen in Satan’s world? Well, Satan intrigues to destroy the church, how can he frustrate it, and where do you frustrate Satan’s decrees and Satan’s plots and his plan to destroy Christians? Either intellectually, culturally, physical or otherwise; how do you do that? How are Christians being destroyed in Russia today? Isn’t it by government decree?

What stops that kind of thing? Can one lone Christian over here in the United States thousands and thousands of miles stop a Russian policeman from arresting a believer? Yes, says the Bible, because this argues that if prayers are made, constant intercessory prayers, this activates the angelic beings in the unseen realm to give. How would that happen? We don’t know, perhaps the angel would just put another thought in that policeman’s mind at the right time so he’d forget to arrest this person. Or he’d look at the person and just not see him for some reason, walk right past him. All sorts of peculiar things can happen. Or major policy changes can happen at high levels of administration in a country. How are these triggered? By believers marching in the streets? Huh-un, by believers praying; it all fits together if you have the divine viewpoint of history.

And you’ll notice, then, that in this chapter we’ve come full circle. We started off with prayer; we went to an almost strong, strong anti-prayer of sovereignty, it is written in the book of truth; it looks like the fatalistic decrees, and yet how is God famous decrees carried out? By agonizing prayer in our realm and agonizing battle in the unseen realm on the part of angelic powers.